Welcome to Listening Habits, a column where I share the music and musical topics I’ve been fixated on recently.
You might've heard recently that the New York Times came out with a list of the 30 greatest living American songwriters, a hyper-specific conceit that reeks of music writers trying to make their job as easy as possible. There also was a supplemental list of 11 songwriters that just missed the cut, meant to head off some of the ire about who got left off. That is what lists are for ultimately: red meat for the engagement maw, a thing to react to and argue about which will hopefully drive traffic. Music outlets/sections are legally required to provide these at least once a year as a result.
Which is all to say, it's not actually worth getting riled up over. There are a lot of names you would expect: Nile Rodgers, Lucinda Williams, Stevie Wonder. And names that make for a pleasant surprise: Missy Elliot, Young Thug, Lana Del Ray. But with only 30 spots there are of course many, many deserving artists excluded. There's Randy Newman, Tom Waits, and Jeff Tweedy as the most notable, but I also felt a twinge of personal sadness to not see the likes of Frank Ocean, Raphael Saadiq, and Lauryn Hill.
I can understand it though, particularly in the case of Ocean and Hill, who, for all their talent, just are not prolific enough. But seeing the list and the ensuing conversation about it does make me wonder what exactly makes one a great American songwriter. If you check out the Times' insiders ballot, you get a veritable cornucopia of what different musicians, writers, and execs value in songwriting. Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney, one of my favorite writers, has a diverse ballot that includes Kathleen Hanna, Patti Smith, Kendrick Lamar, Frank Ocean, Missy Elliot, Mitski, and Sufjan Stevens. DMC of Run-DMC includes Beck, Iggy Pop, Bonnie Raitt, as well as hip-hop peers like Chuck D and Slick Rick. Both Jeff Tweedy and Jermaine Dupri seem to be the only contributors bold enough to nominate themselves, and Dua Lipa, the only pop star who still reads books, only mentioned one name: Patti Smith.
As a whole, the ballots provide great insight into who industry people revere as songwriters. But it gets me no closer to understanding what makes a great American songwriter. Many of the people consistently name-checked tend to fit the loaded "singer-songwriter" designation, the idea of a one-man-band who writes their own lyrics, sings them, and sometimes also makes the music. But I think that obscures the varied ways one can be a great songwriter. For instance, as much as his persona now makes me sick, Pharrell Williams should be in the conversation. For all the success the Neptunes had as producers, songwriting was really Pharrell's strong suit (Chad was really the magic man behind the Neptunes' best beats). In fact, you can watch a great clip on YouTube of Pharrell helping Justin Timberlake write the bridge to "Rock Your Body," one of the best testaments to the magic of pop music when its made well. There are also artists like Beyoncé or Courtney Love who did not write by themselves all the time, but informed their personalities and personas into all of their music enough to deserve recognition for their writing. I'm happy Mariah Carey made it in, but it's curious why others like Mary J. Blige didn't.
And as much as I love the inclusion of Young Thug, he is the lone artist of rap's stream-of-consciousness style to be mentioned. I think Lil Wayne and Future are at least just as deserving. Wayne himself was the pioneer of the stream-of-conscious style, in a much more lyrically dexterous way. Future always had the rhyming capability of anyone else to come from the Dungeon Family tree, and also could write perfect poppy trap songs. He is in particular an underrated writer of love songs.
In general, rap's relationship to the concept of songwriting has been treacherous. In part it's because of how long it took for the genre to gain respect for writing from the wider, whiter world of the music intelligentsia, and also because we still have never been able to decide what makes good songwriting in rap. Speaking of when rap finally earned respect for its writing, the most egregious absence from the list has to be Nas. Not only is Nas a great songwriter, he is also one of the main figures who helped change the perception of rap as a writerly, poetic medium, in all the good and eye-rollingly bad ways that entails.
Jay-Z's inclusion is funny, not for being undeserved—Jay was my first favorite rapper for a reason—but because a large part of his mythos comes from the fact that he never literally wrote down his rhymes, instead crafting them all inside his head. It's an impressive skill when you're one of the best rappers in the game, but his influence there, convincing entire generations of rappers to also put away their pens and pads in order to copy the god MC, has not been so great. I have always held it against Jay that he made not writing the cool thing to do because for like 15 years everything Jay did or said became the cool thing to do.
Then there are the writers who feel like they write in a specifically American way. John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats, Stephen Malkmus of Pavement, Ghostface Killah, T.I., Young Jeezy, etc.—these artists all write not only as Americans but about America, at least the America they personally know. Outkast was great at this as well, and I'm glad that both Big Boi and Andre were included together. Their compatriots in Goodie Mob were also great at writing about their America, particularly in the crime bill era.
There are just too many great writers in music to namecheck. I'm also interested in which younger artists will work their way onto lists like these in the next decade. There's already momentum from the insiders towards Tyler, The Creator. I imagine Olivia Rodrigo will continue to gain momentum as a songwriting fave. MJ Lenderman? Leon Thomas? Will the psy-op propel Cameron Winter into greatest living songwriter status? I'm interested in finding out. Online lists themselves don't matter, but the canon does, and all of these listicles and debates are ultimately about establishing what is and isn't part of the canon. It's always important to interrogate the reasons behind who gets to be in and who gets left out.
The Best Rap Song Of The Moment
Isaiah Rashad's latest It's Been Awful is already a standout for this year, and he's really letting it all hang out on this one. No pun intended, of course.
If you would like to contribute a song, a suggestion, or ask a question for future installments, email me at israel@defector.com.
